Nov.19/20

1. _____, for C.S. Peirce,  is what we would end up with if we could run all the relevant scientific experiments; it is inseparable from its practical consequences, and it is what works. LH 166

2. Bertrand Russell made fun of William James's pragmatic theory of truth by saying it implied that _____ exists. LH 168

3. _______ was a 20th century pragmatist who said we should think of words as tools, not as a mirror of nature. LH 169

4. (T/F) By announcing that "God is dead," Nietzsche was saying that God had been alive at one time and now wasn't. LH  171

5. Freud thought he'd achieved a revolution in thought with his "discovery" of what? LH 177

6. According to Aaron Ridley, Nietzsche blamed what ancient philosopher for bringing about "the death of tragedy" and an equation between reason and reality? LH 174

BONUS: (T/F) Rob Talisse says that for James, religious belief has nothing to do with angels or an afterlife. PB 195 

BONUS2: The point of James's squirrel anecdote was to show that pragmatism is concerned with what?  

DQ:
1. Do important truths always have important, definite consequences "for you and me"? Do you have any beliefs that are important to you but that do not have definite consequences for how you think and live?

2. What does it mean to say that something invisible (God, Santa, truth, virtue etc.) exists? 

3. "Words allow us to cope with the world, not copy it." Agree or disagree? Do true statements mirror reality, or illuminate it less directly?

4. Can God be alive in some places and times or for some people, but not others? How "alive" do you think God will be for most humans, 100 years from now? Would you rather have lived in the middle ages, when belief in God was more nearly universal? Or do you prefer to "imagine no religion"? Would people then really have nothing to kill or die for, and would that be an improvement?

5. Have you ever submitted to psychoanalysis, or interpreted your dreams, or even just revisited episodes from your childhood in an attempt to better understand your own attitudes and behavior? Are people generally too repressed or out of touch with their inner drives and motivations?

6. Is Nietzsche's Apollonian/Dionysian distinction, or the idea that life is best when appropriately balanced between order and abandon, a useful or practical one? Do you "party" with a purpose?